B007P4V3G4 EBOK (41 page)

Werther said that, did he now?' she said. 'I no longer have a
say. You're naughty rascals. Are you naughty sometimes, too?' 'I
don't know,' I said softly. 'You don't know, do you?' she asked,
taking me by the shoulders, squeezing them and giving me a few
mild slaps on my bum. Then she pushed me on ahead of her, into
the kitchen.

Here, Werther was standing in front of the windows of the
veranda door, looking out. With a little fork, he was eating bottled
mussels from a dish. 'I'm Elmer; you know me, I was coming,' I
said quickly. We had to build the windmill.'

The kitchen was very bare. There was only a small wooden
table standing in it.

Without replying, Werther continued to spear mussels and eat
them. 'Their little trunk-thingies are the nicest,' he said, holding up
a mussel with a pale, trailing appendage. 'I eat them last.'

'Is his trunk-thingy the nicest?' his mother asked, who had
remained standing at the kitchen door. 'And you eat it all? How
mean. How would you like it if I ate the nicest bit of you?' She
smiled and snorted. Werther stared at her for a moment and then
he began to giggle.

Werther's mother gave me a fork. 'Have as many as you like,'
she said. 'You can take off the trunk-thingy if you don't like it.' At
this, Werther laughed loudly. I speared a mussel, but in bringing it
up I twisted it round into a position that prevented a trail from
hanging down and brought it quickly to my mouth. It didn't taste
nice to me and I now focussed on fishing out bits of onion. His
mother followed my movements.

'Werther, we've got to start on the windmill,' I said, for I
wanted to get out on to the veranda. He did not reply. 'If there
happens to be someone who's good at building windmills, you've
got to make use of it,' I went on. 'It's stupid not to make a start in
that case. Someone who knows a lot about windmills should
become the leader at once.' I spoke softly because his mother was
listening. Werther asked whether we could get down to some
work on the veranda.

'You can't,' she said curtly. 'I don't want woodwork and mess
there, what with all the muck you walk into the house.'

'When you've left the kitchen we'll do it anyway perhaps,' said
Werther. 'Indeed?' she asked. 'Then you need to be punished barebotty again, and your nice little friend too.' Werther produced the
beginnings of a smile but then he looked down at the floor. His mother came towards me a little and said, loudly: 'Elmer,' - it
surprised me that she had remembered my name so soon - 'they're
such rascals: real scallywags, that's what they are.'

She took a piece of grubby white cardboard - presumably the
bare left-overs of a calendar - from the fireplace, turned it over
and in front of the window she began to decipher a text written
down on it in ink. 'At the time, it has to be five years ago at least,
I used to write down what they did, now and then,' she said. She
then began to read out loud:

'While I'm in the kitchen I hear Werther in the garden. Quite
so. He's there with Martha. He's on the swing. Then she wants to
get on again, and when she's on it, he wants to get on again. Such
teasing!'

'We were living in Tuindorp Oostzaan at the time,' she remarked
by-the-by. 'Have you ever been there?' 'No, I've never been there
but I do know where it is,' I said, carefully. She read on:

'There's snow everywhere so no shortage of pranks. They're
terrible squabblers. Werther is the strongest, for Martha gets it
rubbed in the most. She's made to taste defeat. I stand in the
kitchen and I hear and see it all, though they don't think I do. I see
it all, believe you me. Though they don't think I do, the little
devils.'

Her eyesight had to be poor for she held the cardboard right up
close to her eyes. She scoured ahead rapidly and continued:

'Now it's summer. Everything's in full flower. Werther's off to
the swimming baths with Martha. Yesterday they did their swimming dry, in the bedroom. He was given a pair of swimming
trunks, blue ones. Proud of them as anything, he was!'

Here the text appeared to have ended. Silence fell. Werther
looked out. His mother put the cardboard back, halted for a
moment, and all of a sudden she said as she looked at the table: 'I
liked writing that down. It's handy 'cause you can read it again
some time later.'

'When was this exactly?' I asked. 'Five years or so ago,' she
replied.

'Yes,' I said, 'but doesn't it mention a day or date?' 'No,' she
said, 'it's all completely for fun, of course. Only recently there was
someone who said it had been very good to write that down.
Who was it again, Werther?' He thought. All three of us were
standing still.

'We're going inside,' she then said. She pushed us out ahead of her towards the adjoining room; there was nothing else in it
except for a table with a ping-pong net and four little benches. I
stood there for a moment, undecided, for I didn't know whether I
was allowed to go on ahead into the room facing the street, the
sliding doors of which were open; but a small man sitting there
with his back towards us in a red, plush easy chair, gestured to us.
He was Werther's father.

Only when he moved did I notice him. 'It's quite alright for the
two of you to come and sit here, Werther,' he said, 'as long as you
watch what you're doing a bit.' He had a gaunt, yellow face,
lined and with drawn down eyebrows. His grey eyes looked
tired or sad. He spoke as if reluctant, as if speaking wore him out.
He had narrow shoulders. I calculated that he must be smaller than
Werther's mother.

He was apparently doing nothing but think, for there was no
book or newspaper lying on the little round table in front of him,
nor was he smoking. I didn't know whether to shake his hand or
not; I clumsily moved my feet a few times and then I sat down in
one of the easy chairs. Werther went and stood by the window.

Whereas the room we had passed through was almost empty -
only a thin scrap of matting lying on the floor there - this one was
filled to overflowing: there were six side tables with lace doylies,
at least, benches and foot stools; wherever this was possible,
crocheted cushions had been put down. The wallpaper was dark
and had a design of large, brown autumn leaves. There were eight
wall lamps: two metal ones, two fretwork ones in the shape of a
pointed hat and four cylindrical ones made of parchment painted
with sailing ships. On the mantelpiece over the fire which made
the doyly flutter because of the heat, among three gnomes, a
shepherdess and a porcelain toadstool, stood a brass statue depicting a naked worker with a hammer across his shoulder. 'As long
as you don't sit there scratching the armrests with your nails,'
Werther's mother said. She went back to the kitchen.

'Are you at school with Werther7' his father asked. 'No,' I
replied, 'I'm a friend I think.' At this moment the sun came out and
sharply lit up his head and the thin neck that also turned out to be
covered in lines. On his skull, in the hair cover, a sparse patch
became visible of which the skin appeared to be scabby and
inflamed. As I observed this, I got a feeling of hate and pity both
at once.

Werther stepped back from the window. 'When I leave school I'll be going to the literary-economic High School,' he said. 'What
things do you learn there?'

'Many languages,' his father replied. 'Languages, mainly.' What
sort of languages?' Werther went on asking. 'French, German,
English,' was the man's short reply. His hands were moving on
either side of his chair as if he wanted to begin plucking at the
material. I saw that on the inside of the feet the leather uppers of
his shoes were parting from the soles.

'And no Esperanto at AT Werther asked. His father merely
shook his head.

'And what kind of language is that,' I asked partly addressing
Werther and partly his father. The latter straightened himself and
looked at me severely. 'Do you really want to know or are you
just curious?' he asked. 'If you're really interested, I don't mind
telling you.' 'Yes, I'd really love to know about it,' said I.

He looked at me again, hesitating a moment. 'In the previous
century,' he then said, 'in 1887, if you want to know exactly, a
very great man - I don't mean in the sense of being tall, but
plucky, very learned - he made a language out of a whole lot of
other languages. Werther, you know who that was alright.'

'Zadelhof,' said Werther. 'Doctor Zamenhof,' corrected his father.
'Louis Lazarus Zamenhof. If you're interested, I can tell you lots
more about him. He was a man who lived in Byalystok, in Russian
Poland. No less than four, five languages were spoken there. And
he decided to put an end to that confusion of tongues and so he
compiled Esperanto, the world language. He took something from
all languages. 'And' is an example for you. 'Kai' was
taken from the Greek. That's how he did it'

'That sign with the star, on the door, that's about this,' Werther
said.

'When someone from some foreign country or other comes here
and he's learned Esperanto, then we can talk to one another and
we understand each other,' his father went on. 'That's the great
work of Doctor Zamenhof.' He fell silent a moment.

'But there are still too few people who are prepared to put their
shoulder to the wheel,' he now said, half to himself, pondering.
'For, all too often I run into acquaintances who ask me something
about it from time to time. But when I say: you must go and learn
that language then they don't. They think it's too difficult to learn
those words, they say.'

He let his hands rest between his knees and peered at the carpet. 'Would you like to learn?' he suddenly asked me. 'I don't know,' I
replied. 'I don't know if I could: 'You don't have to start immediately,' he said, 'but if I give you a brochure - that's a kind of little
book - to take away with you, you'd be able to understand that,
wouldn't you?' 'I don't know,' I said. 'That isn't Esperanto,' he
pressed on, 'but it tells of how that Doctor Zamenhof thought it
up. That's very interesting. I'll give you one to take away with
you later on; but will I get it back? It has to be paid for normally,
when someone buys it - fifteen cents: For a moment it seemed as
if he was going to get up to look for it but he continued to sit
there.

'We're going to play ping-gong; Werther said. He took me
along to the room we had passed through, pulled out the leaves of
the table and took the bats and the ball from a cupboard. 'I don't
know how it goes,' I said. He explained the rules to me but I only
listened superficially and peered out to one side: on a veranda on
the opposite side of the gardens a big alsatian was walking to and
fro, barking occasionally and persistently poking his head between
the balusters; doing so, he would get stuck and, whining, would
wrench himself loose again. I realised that he couldn't go anywhere
and couldn't even jump over the balustrade because his run-up
would be too short.

We began to play. Werther s father had continued to sit there
the way we had found him.

When we had been at it a while, Werther's mother came in from
the kitchen. She went and stood next to the table and followed the
ball with her eyes. When she had done this a little while she began
to make grabbing gestures but she didn't snatch it, just. 'Mother,
you're ruining the game completely,' Werther said. Instantly, his
mother stayed her hand and regarded him with a staring gaze.
'You look nice when you play so fervently,' she said; 'you're quite
a pretty little boy really. Or a pretty boy, we'd better say: At
these words, Werther stopped playing and quickly looked at his
father in the front room. He was still sitting motionless, his back
towards us. The ball dropped behind Werther on the ground. His
mother picked it up quickly and pretended to walk away with it.
Pressed by Werther, she put it back down on the table again, however.

'Something like that's fun,' she said to me. 'I like pranks just as
much as you two do. When we used to play outside, we'd make
such fools of ourselves! You didn't think so, did you? I could have fun like nobody's business, I could. I'm mentally young, you
know.'

She took away my bat and assumed my place. 'Now me against
you, Werther' she said. She did quick shakes with her upper torso,
as though she was listening to music.

They began to play. Having missed the ball four times, she
tossed the bat on to the table though the match had not ended
yet. Werther's the champion,' she said. 'Congratulations.' She
stepped up to him with outstretched hand but when he wanted to
grasp it she made a feint, passing his hand, and she grabbed him in
his crotch for a moment. He giggled and jumped away. 'You're the
lovely Werther,' she said. He had jumped towards the sliding
doors and was looking at his father. The latter fumed his head.
'Did you hear that?' he asked. 'What was that, father,' Werther
asked in a frightened voice, 'I didn't hear a thing.'

There was a moment of silence. Werther's mother took up the
bat and swung it airily to and fro, as if she was conducting the
music. I looked down at the floor. 'The chest is opening up,' I
thought.

Outside, a kind of bellowing yowl resounded. From time to time
its pitch would rise. For a moment I thought it was a low siren but
then I realised it had to be a voice. 'It's here in front, in the street,'
Werther's father said. He got up. We all walked over to the
window.

On the pavement along the municipal garden stood a thin man
with a dark-green, hairy coat. He had a bony, weathered face
displaying an embittered expression. In his right hand he held a
large, tin loud-hailer: a megaphone, I knew. We had only just
arrived at the window when he put it to his mouth and let out a
long drawn out, deep noise that sounded like 'Hoo!'. He twisted
his head slowly from side to side. Thereupon he cried out: War
draws near. Be on your guard!' He left instantly at a fast walking
pace and disappeared round the comer.